fghans sleepwalked to the polls to replace Karzai, with a choice
between a US-educated ex-World Bank official Ashraf Ghani (and his
warlord VP Dostum), or the Tajik Abdullah Abdullah who threatens chaos
if he loses. Iraq's April elections, the first national elections since
the US declared 'success' and left in 2011, provide an indication of
what could be in store for Afghans. Rather than confirming the new
order, they precipitated a 'surge' by Sunni insurgents, who quickly
capture a third of the country, discrediting the whole US-imposed
electoral process.

Plans for consolidating Iraq and Afghanistan as pro-US regimes
appear to have collapsed with ISIS's capture of Mosul, facing virtually
no resistance. The Kurdish Peshmurga militia took control of Kirkuk, and
in the south, Iraq's Shia brace to resist ISIS. Iraqis are now living
through the 1990s Afghan scenario, when the Taliban quickly took over a
country in the grips of sectarian violence with the promise to disarm
militias and provide security. In Iraq's Sunni majority areas, a
population exhausted by war and violence is now faced by the same
prospect of accepting a harsh rule by Sunni extremists who promise
security.

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From AQI to ISIS

The Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham/ Syria (ISIS, ISIL) is the heir
to Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), formed as a direct result of the US invasion
of Iraq in 2003. ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, successor to AQI
leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (d. 2006) and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi (d.
2010), has suddenly emerged as a figure who is attempting to shape the
future of Iraq, Syria and the wider Middle East along the lines proposed
by Osama Bin Laden.

In 2006, AQI created an umbrella organization, the Mujahideen Shura
Council, in an attempt to unify Sunni insurgents in Iraq, and AQI
spokesman Abu Ayyub al-Masri declared the self-styled Islamic State of
Iraq (ISI) as a front which included the Shura Council factions. AQI was
at a low point in its fortunes in 2010, as the resistance ot the US
occupation was supposedly collapsing due to the US surge of 2007--2008.
But the US decision to disband the Iraqi army and ban Saddam Hussein's
Baath Party in 2003 also meant the destruction of the Iraqi state, which
meant that the insurgents merely had to wait till the occupying troops
departed.

AQI's transformation into a homegrown organization covering the
Levant is reflected in its name change to ISIS in April 2013. The Syrian
Jabhat al-Nusra (Support Front, 2012) functioned in parallel to
ISIS, and supposedly merged with it in 2013. ISIS leader Baghdadi is
arguably the real heir to Bin Laden, rather that Ayman Zawahiri, who in
vain told Baghdadi to leave Syria to Nusra, and has shown no real
initiative since Bin Laden's assassination in 2011.

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It was Baghdadi who took the initiative to avenge Bin Laden, which included

24 attacks near Baghdad immediately afterwards

a wave of ISI suicide attacks beginning in Mosul in August 2011 resulting in 70 deaths

a series of coordinated car bombings and IED attacks in Baghdad in
December 2011, killing 63 just days after the US completed its troop
withdrawal from the country.

How far Baghdadi is directly responsible for the military strategy
and tactics of ISIS is uncertain. Former Iraqi army and intelligence
officers from the Saddam era are said to play a crucial role. AQI
nonetheless follows the al-Qaeda logic of terror against civilians who
oppose their program, a spin-off of quietist Saudi Wahhabism, but with
Wahhab's militancy restored, the so-called neo-Wahhabis. (Muhammad ibn
Abd al-Wahhab inspired the Saud tribal leaders to rebel against the
Ottomans, eventually founding the Saudi state.)

Dilemma for the US

In both Iraq and Afghanistan, there was no equivalent of the Islamist
movements which offer a genuine alternative to Saudi Wahhabism--the
Muslim Brotherhood or the Iranian Islamists led by Ayatollah Khomeini,
which meant that the collapse of the secular regimes--Afghanistan in the
1990s and Iraq in 2003--quickly gave way to extremist neo-Wahhabi
insurgencies, which initially found common cause with al-Qaeda.

This relationship soured in Afghanistan with 9/11, which the Taliban
were not party to, but the US invasion of Afghanistan again gave the
Taliban and al-Qaeda common cause. The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and
the collapse of Sunni political power opened the door to al-Qaeda there.

US strategy after invading in both cases was to promote a "surge"
(Iraq 2007--2008, Afghanistan 2010--2012) to defeat the insurgencies. It
is clear in both cases that the surge was unsuccessful, merely providing
a breathing space for the US to withdraw its troops, a la Vietnam in 1975.

Iraq's present crisis is an indication of what is in store for
Afghanistan, where a resilient Taliban aim to reassert control. The US
can no longer prevail in either country, as the neo-Wahhabis gain
strength. It is only a matter of time before angry Saudi citizens
recreate the same dynamic in the kingdom itself.

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The only realistic option to prevent this is for the US to push its
Saudi 'ally' to work with Iran and Russia to achieve a negotiated
settlement of the Syrian civil war, and with Iran in Iraq and
Afghanistan to support the elected governments.

The alternative is to let Iraq disintegrate into Sunni, Shia and
Kurdish states, and to allow a similar disintegration of Afghanistan
into Tajik, Pushtun and Shia states--after hundreds of thousands more
deaths.

Can Obama reverse the nightmare of the past decade, or is this scenario what the US intends?

Eric writes for Al-Ahram Weekly and PressTV. He specializes in Russian and Eurasian affairs. His "Postmodern Imperialism: Geopolitics and the Great Games" and "From Postmodernism to Postsecularism: Re-emerging Islamic Civilization" are available at (more...)